Leap Day

Happy February 29, 2008. It is not every year that you get to write that or post on leap day. Today was my first leap day as a teacher. I decided that we should talk about leap day, what it is called in German, how leap day came to be and why we even have a leap year...it was very interesting to research. I was surprised by how much my students knew about it. The day in German is called, Schalttag and the year is called Schaltjahr. Schalten in German means to change or move. February 29th changes and moves the days. Pretty cool. I will not bore you with all of the facts but basically they have known that there needs to be a leap year since 238 B.C. in Egypt. I was pretty amazed by that considering their technology lacked a bit...or a lot. I am sure that there will be many babies born today. They will only "celebrate" their birthday once every years...what a shame considering I think my birthday should be proclaimed a national holiday and should be celebrated for a month.
A few leap year activties that we did today: we threw a frog around the room and said clothing vocabulary for German I, we talked about frogs (and other things that "leap") and did a math quiz in Becoming a Teacher and we wrote about where they think they will be on February 29, 2012 in German IV.
Happy Leap Day everyone! 366 days in 2008, maybe I will be able to get everything done with an extra 24 hours!!!